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If you are starting an online business or want to raise the profile of your personal brand, it is important that you learn to promote your website the right way.
Before investing in promotion, make sure the foundations convert: this guide on building a website that sells helps you review your proposition, structure, trust signals and measurement before attracting more traffic.
There is no point in having an attractive, well-designed site if nobody visits it.
That is why in this article I am going to summarise some of the easiest and quickest ways to promote a business online.
Why is it important to promote a website?
A website can help you achieve many things, such as:
- Attracting more customers or potential leads
- Increasing sales or conversions
- Improving your brand image
- Positioning your brand in your customers’ minds
- Making your products or services known to a wider audience
However, as we have already mentioned, none of this will be possible if nobody visits your site. That is why promoting a website is vital to the success of your online business.
The main channels for promoting a website
There are many ways to promote a website, but below we will go through the main channels or means you can use to start getting your business moving.
Promoting websites with SEO
From a commercial point of view, the main goal of a website is to generate sales, or at least quality enquiries that can turn into customers. To do this, you need to attract qualified traffic to the website, and one of the most effective ways of doing so is SEO.
If you sell to businesses rather than to end consumers, that traffic needs to be handled with a more specific approach to winning B2B clients online, because decision times, the content required and the way a visit becomes a sales opportunity are all different.
SEO involves optimising a website so that it appears in search engine results (mainly Google) when certain keywords are used. As a result, the website receives qualified traffic from people who are looking for what it offers.
Good SEO requires carrying out a series of tasks, such as keyword research, optimising the website’s content and code, and link building.
Keyword research is important for identifying the words that will be used in the SEO strategy. Once a set of relevant keywords has been identified, you need to optimise the content to target those words.
What is more, those searches are not only useful for writing articles: they can also help you plan your business around what people search for on your website, spotting services, questions and opportunities that already show up in the browsing data.
Link building is another important task to carry out as part of an SEO strategy. It involves getting other websites to link to the website you want to promote, which signals to Google that the linked page is relevant and of good quality.
SEO can be a long and complicated process, but the results are worth it.
How to promote a website using social media
Social media is an excellent way to promote a website and drive traffic to it. Make sure you set up accounts on the main social networks and share your website’s content through them.
You can also use paid social media ads to reach a wider audience.
If you want to go deeper, you can read the article 25 powerful ideas to sell more, where I set out a list of actions you can start planning and carrying out.
How to promote your website through advertising
Online ads are one of the quickest ways to promote your website, as they let you reach a large number of people quickly and efficiently.
There are different types of ads you can use, depending on your goals and the budget you are prepared to invest. Some of the most common are the following:
- Search ads: these ads are shown in the results of search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, and only appear when someone carries out a search related to what you offer.
- Display ads: these ads are shown on websites related to your niche and can include images, videos or text.
- Social media ads: as the name suggests, these ads are shown on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
- Video ads: these ads are embedded in videos on platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo, and can include an image or a short piece of text.
Depending on your budget and goals, you can use one or several of these types of ads to promote your website.
For example, if you want to reach a large number of people quickly, you can use search and display ads. If you want to focus on a specific niche, you can use social media ads. And if you want to promote your website through videos, you can use video ads.
How to promote your website using email
There are different ways to promote your website using email, although they are focused on retaining your audience and following up with users so that they complete the goal.
Newsletter
Newsletters are an effective way to communicate with your website’s visitors and keep them up to date with your latest content and offers. You can create a newsletter and send it to your website’s subscribers regularly, or you can make it one more element of your marketing strategy.
To create an effective newsletter, make sure the content is relevant and of good quality. It is also important for the design to be attractive and easy to read.
Once you have created your newsletter, you can promote it through social media, on your website or through ads.
Using email in conversion funnels
Using email as a website promotion technique is essential to the success of any online business. Emails can be used at different stages of the conversion funnel, from the first contact with a potential customer to promoting special offers and discounts.
It is therefore important to create a good email marketing strategy tailored to your business goals. Some ideas for promoting your website using email include:
Use emails to make first contact with your potential customers
You can include a link to your website or blog in the body of the email, or you can use emails to send your potential customers straight to a landing page.
Use emails to announce special offers and discounts
This is an effective way to boost sales and increase traffic to your website.
Include a CTA (call to action) in all your emails
A good CTA can encourage email recipients to take an action, visit your website or blog, sign up to a newsletter or download an eBook.
Use emails to encourage engagement.
Include questions in your emails so that recipients interact with you, or use emails to invite your followers to take part in a prize draw or competition.
Use emails to segment your audience
Create different lists of contacts based on your recipients’ interests and preferences, so you can send them more relevant and personalised emails.
Steps in an online business promotion strategy
Below, we give you some useful tips so you can start promoting your website and begin getting the results you want:
1. Identify your target audience
The first step in starting to promote your website is to identify your target audience.
You need to be clear about who you want to visit your website and what you are trying to achieve. If you are not clear about who your target audience is, it will be very difficult to reach them effectively.
2. Use content marketing
Content marketing focuses on creating and sharing relevant, quality information with the aim of attracting new potential customers and boosting sales.
To use content marketing effectively, you need to identify what interests your target audience and create content that is useful to them.
It is important for the content to be original, interesting and of good quality, as this makes users more likely to engage with it and share it.
3. Make use of social media
Social media is a very powerful tool for communicating with your customers and promoting your website.
To use social media effectively, you need to create profiles on different social networks and start interacting with your followers.
It is important that you post quality content and reply to your followers’ comments and questions promptly.
4. Optimise your website for SEO
To start promoting your website, the first thing you need to do is optimise it for SEO.
This means your site has to be well designed and must contain all the relevant keywords that users may be searching for.
If your site is not optimised for SEO, it is very likely that it will not even appear in search engine results.
5. Use email marketing techniques
Email marketing is a very effective way to communicate with your potential customers and promote your website.
To use email marketing effectively, you need to build a contact list and start sending them emails based on their interests and preferences.
6. Take part in online forums and communities
When it comes to how to promote a website, taking part in online forums and communities is a very effective technique.
This will let you connect directly with your target audience and build a good reputation as an expert in your field.
Make sure you find forums and communities relevant to your business, and then take an active part in the conversations.
Do not promote your site directly, but make your name and the link to your website visible in your signature.
If you add value and build a good reputation, people will naturally visit your website to find out more.
7. Collaborate with other websites, bloggers or influencers
Look for websites, bloggers or influencers relevant to your field and get in touch with them to see whether they would be interested in collaborating with you.
A collaboration could include a mention in a blog post, a product review or even a video.
Keys to success in promoting a website
Success in promoting a website depends largely on your ability to reach your target audience.
To start promoting your website, you need to identify your target audience and create content and marketing strategies that are relevant to them.
Use social media, content marketing and email marketing to communicate with your potential customers and attract more traffic to your website.
Take part in online forums and communities to build a good reputation as an expert in your field, and look for collaborations with other websites relevant to your business.
Promote your website by following these tips and you will start to see results.
Any questions? Ask in the comments
Technical SEO consultant in Valencia for more than 16 years. Speaker and organiser at WordCamp Valencia and author on the Semrush and Publisuites blogs. More about me
